Far-Right Epoch Times Loses Riot Defamation Lawsuit

Law & Crime reports:

The publisher of The Epoch Times and an executive who co-founded the far-right newspaper lost an effort to revive a defamation lawsuit against a Maine reporter who accurately reported on that founder’s conspiracy theory about the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol Complex.

In a blistering opinion, a three-judge panel of the First Circuit unanimously found that the reporting alleged to be defamatory was in fact “substantially true.”

The Epoch Times plaintiffs wanted the article retracted, an injunction that barred the reporter and the non-profit news outlet “from further publication of any false, malicious, defamatory or materially misleading comments regarding Plaintiff[s],” and various damages.

Read the full article.

In his report, the journalist noted that the Epoch Times’ vice president claimed on a radio show that antifa infiltrators were behind the Capitol riot.

The Epoch Times is owned by the Chinese cult Falun Gong, which also owns the traveling acrobatics show Shen Yun.

The outlet has a massive reach on social media and its articles often appear on Facebook’s most-shared lists.

Epoch Times Loses Defamation Lawsuit About ‘Substantially True’ Reporting on Co-Founder’s Jan. 6th Conspiracy Theorieshttps://t.co/s99BIuxnyF

— Law & Crime (@lawcrimenews) October 26, 2022